Chapter 2: Bataan Prelude

The Japanese did not confine their operations in the Philippines to
Luzon, but December
landings on Mindanao and Jolo Islands were made primarily to secure
bases for further
attacks against Borneo. Here again the hastily mobilized Philippine
Army reservists
and Constabulary troopers were no match for the assault forces, and the
enemy made
good his lodgment. Offensive operations in the south, however, were
limited by the fact
that General Homma did not have sufficient troops to press a campaign
on two fronts.
The main strength of the Fourteenth Army remained on Luzon to
win control
of Manila Bay.

The original Japanese operation plan for Luzon had contemplated
its occupation by
the end of January and had provided for a mop-up force of one division
and one brigade
with a small air support unit. Shortly after Homma's troops entered
Manila on 2
January, he received orders to expedite the withdrawal of the 48th
Division
and the 5th Air Group which were needed to reinforce
stepped-up operations
against Java and on the Asian mainland. In short return for these troop
losses
Homma got the 65th Brigade from Formosa, originally assigned
to mop-up
and police duties. The brigade, which landed on Lingayen Gulf beaches
on 1 January,
was selected by Homma as his Bataan assault force and reinforced with
an infantry
regiment from the 16th Division and tank, artillery, and
service troops from
army reserves.

The necessary reorganization of the 65th Brigade for
combat and its movement
into jump-off positions gave MacArthur time to establish and initial
defense line.
On 7 January he reorganized his forces into two corps and a rear area
service command.
Wainwright was given I Philippine Corps with responsibility for holding
the western
front, and Parker became II Philippine Corps commander with his troops
manning
defenses on the Manila Bay side of Bataan. More than 80,000 men were
now bottled
up on the peninsula and some 50,000 held positions on or near the
initial defense line.
There were impressive figures, and in paper strength the Bataan
defenders outnumbered
the Fourteenth Army which had about 50,000 troops under its
command.

Military superiority depends, however, on many other factors
besides relative troop strength.
The conglomerate American-Filipino forces, completely cut off from
effective relief,
had limited supplies of rations, medicines, weapons, ammunition, and
equipment.
By contrast, the enemy's control of the sea and air gave the Japanese
an unmatchable
resupply and reinforcement potential. Even when

--172--

the Fourteenth Army's
fortunes were at their lowest ebb, the enemy troops could reasonably
expect rescue and relief.

On 5 January MacArthur, in a move to conserve dwindling food
stocks, had cut all
troops on Bataan and the fortified islands to half rations.2
This order was undoubtedly the most significant given in the campaign.
It prolonged
the fighting for weeks, until Bataan's defenses eventually collapsed.
Men sapped by
malnutrition and its attendant diseases, for which there were no
medicines, could
resist no more.

In launching their initial attack on Bataan the Japanese did not
expect that the
reinforced 65th Brigade would have much trouble defeating the
American-Filipino
forces. The enemy was flushed with his successes and "completely
ignorant concerning
the terrain of Bataan Peninsula."3 Homma's intelligence
officers had underestimated MacArthur's strength by half, had given
their commander
a distorted picture of Filipino morale, and had formulated an
altogether incorrect
estimate of the defensive situation on Bataan. The Fourteenth Army
staff had:

...optimistically presumed that, considering its position
relative to Corregidor Island,
the enemy would offer serious resistance at the southern end of the
Peninsula with
Mariveles as a nucleus, withdrawing later to Corregidor Island. Taking
this for granted,
the threat of enemy resistance was taken lightly.4

Bataan Peninsula was an ideal position from the viewpoint of a
force
committed to
a last-ditch stand. Thirty miles long at its deepest point and 25 miles
wide at its base,
the peninsula tapered to an average width of 15 miles. Numerous
streams, ravines,
and gullies cut up the interior and thick jungle growth blanketed
everything. A spine
of mountains running northwest to southeast split Bataan roughly in
half. The dominant
features in the north were Mt. Natib (4,222 feet) and its companion Mt.
Silanganan
(3,620 feet), and in the south, Mt. Bataan (4,700 feet), which
commanded the Mariveles
area. Although numerous trails criss-crossed the peninsula, only two
motor roads existed,
one running along the coast and the other over the saddle between the
mountain masses.
The western coast line was uneven with many promontories formed by
mountain ridges;
the eastern coast was more regular and open but became hilly and rugged
in the south.
(See Map 7)

Map 7: Japanese Landing on Bataan

The final defense line selected by USAFFE was midway down the
peninsula, anchored
on the towns of Bagac and Orion, and generally along the trace of the
cross-peninsula
motor road. It was the necessity of covering the preparation of this
area for defense and
the need to use the road as a supply route as long as possible that
dictated the occupation
of the initial defense line. Stretching across the peninsula just above
the point where it
narrowed, this position had a grave natural weakness. The corps
boundary ran along
the Natib-Silanganan mountain mass which pierced the defenses and
prevented liaison
or even contact between Wainwright's and Parker's men. The Japanese
attempt to crack
this defense line eventually involved landing far behind the front and
brought the Marines
at Mariveles into action.

--173--

SYMBOLIC OF JAPANESE SUCCESSES in the early stages of the war is
this photograph taken on Mt. Limay on Bataan during the fighting in the
Philippines. (SC 334265)

Although the farthest distance from the rear boundaries of the corps
areas to the
southern shore of Bataan was only ten miles, the defensive problem
facing Brigadier
General Allan C. McBride's Service Command was acute. With a relatively
few men
McBride had to guard over 40 miles of rough, jungle-covered coast line
against enemy
attack. A successful amphibious thrust which cut the vital coastal
supply road could
mean the prompt end of the battle for Bataan. To protect the east coast
he had the
newly-organized 2d (Constabulary) Division; on the west coast he had a
motley composite
force of service troops and planeless pursuit squadrons converted to
infantry, backed
up by a few elements of the 71st Division and a Constabulary regiment.
Responsibility
for the security of the naval reservation at Mariveles remained with
the Navy.

In order to provide protection for Mariveles and support the Army
in the defense of
the west coast, Admiral Rockwell on 9 January directed Captain John
J.S. Dessez,
commander of the section base, to form a naval battalion for ground
combat. The senior
naval aviator remaining in the Philippines Commander Francis J.
Bridget, was
appointed battalion commander and he immediately set about organizing
his force.
For troops he had about 480 bluejackets including 150 of his own men
from Air,
Asiatic Fleet, 130 crewmen from the submarine tender Canopus,
80 sailors
from the Cavite Naval Ammunition Depot, and 120 general duty men from
Cavite
and Mariveles. He was also assigned approximately 120 Marines, members
of Batteries
A and C which had remained behind on Bataan under naval control when
the rest of
the 1st Separate Battalion (now 3/4) had moved to Corregidor.

The men of First Lieutenant William F. Hogaboom's Battery A had
originally been
slated to provide replacement and relief gun crews for Battery C (First
Lieutenant
Willard C. Holdredge) whose 3-inch guns were set up in a rice paddy
between the
town of Mariveles and the section base. But on 5 January Hogaboom had
received
instructions from a USAFFE staff officer, "approved by naval
authorities on the
'Rock',"6
to move his unit to the site of MacArthur's
advance CP on Bataan where the Marines were to furnish the interior
guard. This
assignment was short-lived, however, since Commander Bridget needed the
men to
service as tactical instructors and cadres for the naval battalion, and
on 14 January
he directed Hogaboom to report back to Mariveles. To replace Battery A,
USAFFE
detached two officers and 47 men from the 4th Marines7
and sent them from Corregidor to Bataan where they guarded the advance
headquarters
until the end of the campaign.

The most serious problem Bridget faced in forming his battalion
was the lack of ground
combat training of his bluejackets. As the commander of the Canopus,
naturally
an interested spectator, noted:

--175--

...perhaps two-thirds of the sailors knew which end of
the rifle should be presented
to the enemy, and had even practiced on a target range, but field
training was practically
a closed book to them. The experienced Marines were spread thinly
throughout each
company in hope that through precept and example, their qualities would
be assimilated
by the rest.8

Even after the formation of the naval battalion, the primary
responsibility for antiaircraft
defense of Mariveles still rested with the Marine batteries and only a
relatively few
men, mostly NCO's, could be spared to help train the bluejacket
companies. Holdredge's
3-inchers required at least skeleton crews and Hogaboom's unit, after
its return from
USAFFE control, was directed to mount and man nine .50 caliber
machine-gun posts
in the hills around the harbor. Therefore, in both batteries the
majority of men available
for ground combat were sailors; Battery A joined one officer and 65
bluejackets on
16-17 January and a Navy officer and 40 men joined Holdredge's battery
on the 18th
and 19th.9
Throughout the naval battalion, training
was confined to fundamentals as Bridget strove to qualify his men as
infantry. As was
the case so often in the Philippines, the time for testing the combat
readiness of the
jury-rigged battalion came all to soon.

In opening his attack on Bataan, General Homma committed the main
strength of
the 65th Brigade along the front of Parker's II Corps,
figuring that the more
open terrain along the east coast gave him a greater opportunity to
exploit successes.
By 11 January the Japanese had developed and fixed Parker's defenses
and were probing
for weak spot preparatory to an all-out assault. It was inevitable that
they found the
open and highly vulnerable left flank. By 22 January Parker's position
along the slopes
of Mt. Natib had been turned and all reserves with the exception of one
regiment had
been committed to contain the penetration. In order to prevent the
defending forces
from being cut off, USAFFE ordered a general withdrawal to the
Bagnac-Orion defense
line, to be completed by the 26th.

The enemy advancing along the mountainous west coast did not
contact General
Wainwright's forward positions until 15 January. By that date, Homma,
impressed
by the lack of resistance in this sector, had already ordered the 20th
Infantry
of the 16th Division to reinforce and exploit the drive,
strike through to the
Bagac road junction, and gain the rear of Parker's corps. Although I
Corps had been
stripped of reserves to back up the sagging eastern defense line,
Wainwright's front-line
troops were able to stand off the initial Japanese assaults. When
Homma's fresh
troops attacked on the 21st, however, they effected a lodgment behind
the front which
eventually made withdrawal toward Bagac mandatory. The local Japanese
commander,
encouraged by his success, decided

--176--

on a shore-to-shore amphibious assault which would hit the
Bataan coastal road about four miles below Bagac.

Embarking after dark on the night of 22-23 January, the enemy's
900-man landing
force (2d Battalion, 20th Infantry ) started out for its
objective. It never arrived.
En route two launches of the battalion's boat group were discovered and
sunk by an
American torpedo boat11
and it is possible that these
attacks were instrumental in scattering the remainder of the landing
force. in any event,
the enemy boats lost their bearings completely in the darkness. Instead
of landing on
the objective, two-thirds of the unit landed at Quinauan Point, eight
miles south of Bagac.
The remainder of the battalion, 7 officers and 294 men, came ashore at
Longoskawayan
Point, a finger-like promontory only 2,000 yards west of Mariveles.
(See Map 7)

The Longoskawayan landing force was not discovered immediately,
and the enemy
had time to advance along jungle-matted cliffs and reach Lapiay Point,
the next
promontory to the north. The Japanese patrols headed inland from Lapiay
for Mt.
Pucot, a 617-foot hill which commanded both the west coast road and the
landing site.
The first word of the presence of the enemy in his defense sector
reached Commander
Bridget at 0840 on 23 January when the small lookout detachment he had
posted on
Pucot was driven from its position by enemy machine-gun fire.

Bridget immediately phoned Hogaboom and Holdredge, directing both
officers to send
out patrols. Hogaboom, closest to me scene of action, sent on
bluejacket platoon under
Lieutenant (junior grade) Leslie A. Pew directly to Pucot while he led
a second platoon
himself in a sweep through the ridges south of the hill. Pew's platoon
deployed as it approached the hilltop, attacked through scattered rifle
and machine-gun fire, and
secured the high ground without difficulty. The Japanese offered only
slight resistance
and then faded out of contact.

South of the hill Hogaboom ran into a platoon from Battery C which
had had a brush
with the Japanese and taken a couple of casualties, but again the enemy
had disappeared.
The story of light firing and no firm resistance was much the same from
the rest of
the probing patrols which Bridget ordered out on the 23d; the Japanese
evidently were
still feeling out the situation and were not as yet disposed to make a
stand or an attack.
At dusk the patrols assembled on the mountain and set up a defense line
along its crest
and the ridges to the south facing Lapiay and Longoskawayan Points.

During the day Bridget had called on the Service Command for
reinforcements but
few men could be spared as most reserves already had been committed to
contain the
larger landing force at Quinauan Point. For infantry he got the 3d
Pursuit Squadron
and 60 men from the 301st Chemical Company whom he put into a holding
line above
Lapiay Point and on the north slope of Pucot; for fire support he
received one 2.95-inch
mountain pack howitzer and crew from the 71st Division. By nightfall
the chemical
company had tied in with the pursuit squadron on its right and with
Battery A atop
Pucot on its left; platoons from Battery C, the Air, Asiatic Fleet
Company, and the Naval

--177--

Ammunition Depot Company held the rest of Pucot's crest and
the southern ridges which
blocked off the landing area from Mariveles.12
None of the naval battalion units was at full strength and none of the
platoons strung
out along the ridges was strictly a Navy or a Marine outfit. sailors
predominated but
Marines were present all along the line, mostly as squad leaders and
platoon sergeants.
The composition of that part of the battalion which got into action
became even more
varied as the battle shaped up, and eventually about a third of the men
on the front-line
were drawn from the Marine batteries.

Bridget's men got their first real taste of the blind fighting of
jungle warfare on the 24th.
Hogaboom led a patrol down the bluff above Lapiay Point and ran head-on
into an
enemy machine gun firing from heavy cover. Grenades thrown at the gun
exploded
harmlessly in a tangle of lush vegetation which screened it from view;
the men were
being fired upon and they were replying, but sound rather than sight
was the key to
targets. When reinforcements arrived later in the day an attempt was
made to establish
a holding line across the point, but the Japanese opened up with a
second machine
gun and steady rifle fire. Then they began dropping mortar and howitzer
shells among
Hogaboom's' group. The Marine officer ordered a withdrawal to the
previous night's positions.

The source of the mortar and howitzer fire was Longoskawayan Point
where a patrol
led by Lieutenant Holdredge had encountered the main body of Japanese.
His two-man
point had surprised an enemy group setting up a field piece in a
clearing and opened
up with a rifle and a BAR, dropping about a dozen men around the gun.
The Japanese
reaction was swift, agreeing with the BAR-man's evaluation that the
surprise fire
"ought to make them madder'n hell."13 The patrol
fell back, fighting a rear guard action until it cleared the area of
the point's tip, and
then it retired to the ridges. After the day's action Hogaboom and
Holdredge compared
notes and estimated that they faced at least 200 well-equipped enemy
troops in strong
positions; they informed Bridget of their conclusion that it would take
a fully-organized
battalion with supporting weapons to dislodge them.

On the morning of 25 January, USAFFE augmented Bridget's force by
sending him
a machine-gun platoon and an 81mm mortar platoon from the 4th Marines
on The Rock.
The two mortars immediately set up on a saddle northwest of Pucot and,
with Hogaboom
spotting for them, worked over the whole of Lapiay and Longoskawayan
Points; direct
hits were scored on the positions where the Japanese had been
encountered the day before.
A midafternoon patrol discovered that the enemy had evacuated Lapiay,
but it was soon
evident where they had gone. Holdredge led a combined force of several
platoons against
Longoskawayan Point and ran into a hornet's nest. He himself was among
those wounded
before the platoons

--178--

could extricate themselves. Again the naval battalion
occupied blocking
positions on the ridges east of the points for night defense.

During the action of the 25th, USAFFE had changed the command
structure in the
rear service area and given the corps commanders responsibility for
beach defense
throughout Bataan. In addition, MacArthur had granted permission for
the 12-inch
mortars on Corregidor to support Bridget's battalion. Shortly after
midnight, the giant
mortars, spotted in by an observer on Mt. Pucot, laid several rounds on
Longoskawayan
Point. The daylight hours were spent in light patrol action while the
battalion was
readied for a full-scale attack on the 27th. General Wainwright sent a
battery of
Philippine Scout 75mm guns to support the drive.

At 070 on 27 January the mountain howitzer, the Marine mortars,
the Scout 75's, and
Corregidor's 12-inch mortars fired a preparation on Longoskawayan, and
a skirmish
line of about 200 men, some 60-75 of them Marines, started to advance.
The enemy
reoccupied his positions as soon as the supporting fire lifted, and the
jungle came alive
with bullets and shell fragments. The right and center of the line made
little progress
in the face of heavy machine-gun fire. On the left where the going was
a little easier
a gap soon opened through which Japanese infiltrating groups were able
to reach the
reserve's positions.

During the resulting hectic fighting, the enemy opened up with
mortar fire to herald
a counterattack; fortunately, the 4th Marines' 81's were able to
silence this fire, but it
was soon obvious that the naval battalion was in no shape to advance
farther or even
to hold its lines on Longoskawayan. Bridget again authorized a
withdrawal to the night
defense lines on the eastern ridges.

The solution to the problem of eliminating the Japanese beachhead
arrived late that
afternoon. Colonel Clement, who had come over from Corregidor to advice
Bridget on
the conduct of the Longoskawayan action, had requested reinforcements
from I Corps.
Wainwright sent in the regular troops needed and the 2d Battalion of
the 57th
Philippine Scout Regiment relieved the naval battalion, which went into
reserve.
The 4th Marines' mortars and machine guns were assigned to the Scouts
to support
their operations. The oddly-assorted platoons of Bridget's battalion
were not committed
to action again, but they had done their job in containing the Japanese
though
outnumbered and outgunned.

The Scouts spent 28 January in developing the Longoskawayan
position. On the 29th
they attacked in full strength with all the support they could muster.
The mine sweeper Quail, risking an encounter with Japanese
destroyers, came
out from Mariveles
and cruised offshore while Commander Bridget spotted for the 12-inch
mortars and
the 75mm guns. The ship closed from 2,200 to 1,300 yards firing
point-blank at
Japanese soldiers trying to hide out in the caves and undergrowth along
the shores of
the point.14
Ashore the Scouts, supported by
machine-gun and mortar fire from the landing flanking the point, did
the job expected
of them and smashed through the enemy lines. By nightfall organized
resistance had
ended and the cost of taking Lapiay and Longoskawayan

--179--

had been counted. Bridget's
unit had lost 11 killed and 26 wounded in action; the Scout casualties
were 11 dead
and 27 wounded; and the Japanese had lost their entire landing force.

During the next few days patrols, aided by ship's launches armored
and manned by
crewmen from the Canopus, mopped up the area, killing
stragglers and taking
a few prisoners, but the threat to Mariveles was ended. Similar action
by adequately
supported Scout units wiped out the Quinauan Point landing force by 7
February.
The major Japanese attempt to reinforce the beleaguered troops on
Quinauan was
beaten back by the combined fore of artillery, naval guns, and the
strafing of the four
P-40's remaining on Bataan. Elements of an enemy battalion which did
get ashore on
a point of land just above Quinauan on 27 January and 2 February were
also finished
off by the Scouts.

By 13 February the last survivors of the amphibious attempts had
been killed or captured.
The make-shift beach defense forces which had initially contained the
landings had
barely managed to hold their own against the Japanese. They had had to
overreach
themselves to keep the enemy off balance and prevent a breakthrough
while the troops
of I and II Corps were falling back to the Bagac-Orion position. Once
that line was
occupied and Wainwright could commit some of his best troops in
sufficient numbers
and with adequate support, the Japanese were finished. Discouraged by
their amphibious
fiasco, the enemy never again attempted to hit the coastal flanks of
the American-Filipino
positions.
(See Map 7)

At the same time the survivors of the landing attempts were being
hunted down,
the Japanese offensive sputtered to a halt in front of the Bagac-Orion
line. The initial
enemy advance on Bataan had not been made without cost, and the
casualty rate now
soared so high that the attacking troops were rendered ineffective. On
13 February
Homma found it necessary to break contact, pull back to a line of
blocking positions,
and to regroup his battered forces. The lull in the Fourteenth
Army's attack
was only temporary, however, as Homma was promised replacements and
reinforcements.
When the second phase of the battle for Bataan opened, the scales were
heavily tipped
in favor of the Japanese.

The detachment of Canopus crewmen, the sailors from the
Cavite Naval
Ammunition Depot, and the majority of the general duty men, nine
officers and 327
enlisted men in all, were transferred to the 4th Marines on Corregidor
on 17-18 February.
Commander Bridget and his naval aviation contingent moved to Forth
Hughes on
the 30th where Bridget became beach defense commander with Major Stuart
W. King
of the 4th Marines as his executive officer. Battery C of 3/4 remained
at Mariveles to
man its antiaircraft guns, but Battery A rejoined the regiment, with
most of its men
going to Headquarters Company to augment the regimental reserve.

The assignment of the sailors of the naval battalion to Colonel
Howard's command
accentuated the growing joint-service character of the Marine regiment.
Small contingents
of crewmen from damaged or sunken boats of the Inshore Patrol also had
been joined
and over 700 Philippine Army air cadets and their officers were now
included in the
4th's ranks. These men, most of whom had never had

--180--

any infantry training, were
distributed throughout the companies on beach defense and in reserve
where the
experienced Marines could best train them by example and close
individual instruction.
No company in the regiment retained an all-Marine complexion.

The arrival of reinforcements on Corregidor and Caballo came at a
time when the
Japanese had stepped up their campaign against the fortified islands.
On 6 February,
the first enemy shells, fired by 105mm guns emplaced along the shore of
Cavite Province,
exploded amidst the American positions on all the islands. The reaction
was swift and
the forts replied with the guns that could bear. The counterbattery
exchange continued
throughout February and early March, occasionally waning as the
Japanese were
forced to shift to new firing positions by gunners on Forts Frank and
Drum.
The limited number of planes available to Homma made enemy bombers
infrequent
visitors during this period, and the Japanese concentrated on reducing
the island
defenses with artillery fire. In the first week of March, the American
commander on
Fort Frank received a demand for its surrender with a boast that the
Cavite coast
was lined with artillery and that:

...Carabao will be reduced by our mighty artillery fire,
likewise Drum; after
reduction of Carabao and Drum our invincible artillery will pound
Corregidor
into submission, batter it, weaken it, preparatory to a final assault
by crack Japanese
landing troops.16

The surrender note was unproductive for the enemy, but it was prophetic
regarding
the fate of Corregidor.

Until the Japanese were ready to renew their assault on Bataan in
late March, the
severity of the enemy shellings from Cavite was not great enough to be
effective in
halting the construction and improvement of beach defenses on
Corregidor. Trenches
and gun positions lined the shores of Bottomside and the ravines
leading to Topside
and Middleside from the beaches. Barbed wire entanglements and mine
fields
improvised from aerial bombs were laid across all possible approaches.
The ordnance stores of the island were searched to provide increased
firepower for
the 4th Marines,17
and guns were sited to insure
that any landing force would be caught in a murderous crossfire if it
attempted to
reach shore.

The thoroughness of the regiment's preparations was indicative of
its high state of morale.
The men manning the beach defenses, and to a lesser extent their
comrades in the
jungles of Bataan, never completely abandoned hope of rescue and relief
until the
very last days of their ordeal.18 Even when General
MacArthur was ordered to leave the Philippines to take over a new
Allied command
in the Southwest Pacific, many men thought that he would return,
leading a strong
relief force. The senior commanders in the Philippines and the Allied
leaders knew
the truth, however, and realized that barring a miracle, Luzon was
doomed to fall.
Only a few key men could be taken out of the trap by submarine, torpedo
boat, or

--181--

plane; the rest had to be left to accept their fate.

On 11 March, the day before MacArthur and his party started the
first leg of their
journey to Australia, he created a new headquarters, Luzon Force, to
control the
operations on Bataan and appointed General Wainwright to its command.
On 20 March,
the War Department notified Wainwright of his promotion to lieutenant
general and of
the fact that he was to be commander of all forces remaining in the
Philippines. To take
the place of USAFFE, and area headquarters, United States Forces in the
Philippines
(USFIP), was created.

To take his place on Bataan, Wainwright appointed the USAFFE
Artillery Officer,
Major General Edward P. King, Jr. King drew an unenviable task when he
took over
Luzon Force, for the volume of Japanese preparatory fire on Bataan and
on the
island forts indicated the start of a major effort. To meet this
attack, King had troops
who had already spent two weeks on a diet of 3/8 of a ration on top of
two months of
half rations; they were ready to fight but "with not enough food in
their bellies to sustain a
dog."19
The USAFFE Surgeon General, on 18
February, had accounted Bataan's defenders as being only 55% combat
efficient as
a result of "debilities due to malaria, dysentery, and general
malnutrition."20
These same men were now a month
further along on the road to exhaustion and collapse and were destined
to meet a fresh
and vigorous enemy assault.

The Fourteenth Army set 3 April as D-day for its renewed
offensive on
Bataan, and General Homma foresaw "no reason why this attack should not
succeed."22
He could well be confident since he had
received the infantry replacements needed to rebuild the 16th
Division and
the 65th Brigade, and he had been sent the 4th Division
from Shanghai.
In addition, Imperial Headquarters had allotted him a
strongly reinforced
infantry regiment from the 21st Division, originally slated
for duty in Indo-China.
His artillery strength had been more than doubled and now included
far-ranging
240-mm howitzers. Two heavy bomber regiments had been flown up from
Malaya
to increase materially his mastery of the air.

Once the enemy attack was launched, the pressure on Bataan's
defenders was relentless.
In less than a week the issue had been decided. The physically weakened
Americans
and Filipinos tried desperately to stem the Japanese advance, but to no
avail. By 7 April
the last reserves had been committed. A growing stream of dazed,
disorganized men,
seeking to escape the incessant bombardment at the front and the
onrushing enemy,
crowded the roads and trails leading to Mariveles. Only isolated groups
of soldiers still
fought to hold the Japanese back from the tip of the peninsula. Under
these circumstances,
General King decided to seek surrender terms. His aide recorded the
situation in his diary:

8th [April]. Wednesday. The army can not attack. It is
impossible.
Area is congested with stragglers ... General King has ordered all

--182--

tanks thrown [blown?]
and arms destroyed, and is going forward to contact the Japanese and
try to avert
a massacre.23

Near midnight on the 8th a severe earthquake tremor was felt on
Corregidor and
Bataan, and soon thereafter the Mariveles harbor was shaking violently
from man-made
explosions, as King's orders to destroy all munitions dumps were
carried out.
To an observer on The Rock it seemed that:

... the southern end of Bataan was a huge conflagration
which resembled more than
anything else a volcano in violent eruption ... white hot pieces of
metal from exploded
shells and bombs shot skyward by the thousands in every conceivable
direction.
Various colored flares exploded in great numbers and charged off on
crazy courses much the
same as a sky rocket which has run wild on the ground.24

All night long the water between Bataan and Corregidor was lashed
with
falling
debris and fragments from the explosions. Through this deadly shower a
procession
of small craft dodged its way to the north dock of Bottomside.
Everything that could
float was pressed into use by frantic refugees. Some of the arrivals,
however, such as
the nurses from Bataan's hospitals, were under orders to report to
Corregidor. Specific
units that could strengthen The Rock's garrison, antiaircraft batteries
and the 45th
Philippine Scout Regiment, had also been called for. Only the AAA
gunners from the
Mariveles area, including the 4th Marines' Battery C, managed to
escape. The Scout
regiment was prevented from reaching the harbor in time by the jammed
condition of
the roads.

By noon on 9 April, General King had found out that no terms would
be given him;
the Japanese demanded unconditional surrender. With thousands of his
men lying
wounded and sick in open air general hospitals and all hope of
successful resistance
gone, King accepted the inevitable and surrendered, asking only that
his men be given
fair treatment. The battle for Bataan had ended, and more than 75,000
gallant men
began the first of more than a thousand days of brutal captivity.

[11]
ComMTBron-3, Rept of Act of USS Pt-34 on the night of 22-23Jan42,
27Feb42 (located at NHD), 1.

[12]
An officer of 3/4 who kenw many of the survivors of this action, later
wrote an article
describing the battle. He maintained that the Army detachments
mentioned never
joined, although they may have been assigned, and that the purely naval
companies
were not used as such. Instead the sailors who could be spared joined
one of the Marine
units. While this story is quite credible, in this instance the
contemporary Bridget Rept has been used as a guide.
See LtCol W.F. Pricket, "Naval Battalion at Mariveles," MC Gazette,
June 1950, 40-43.

[17]
One source of beach defense guns was the sub-caliber 37mm's which were
used for
practice firing by Corregidor's big guns. These were dismounted from
the gun tubes
and turned over to the Marines. LtGen S.L. Howard interview by HistBr,
G-3, HQMC, 26Oct56, hereinafter cited as Howard Interview.